Light is a slippery substance, especially these days. Color is in plenty, almost always. This is funny because color is to light as time is to space, eventually the same thing.
Pause.
Back home, I watch teenagers with spray paint anoint the dilapidated bridge with streaky red, black, green, and white. Graffiti is otherwise mundane. Color is vital, revolution.
Pause.
During the last semester, I cycled through various combinations of psychotropics at the request of my doctors, each of which had a different intervention on my body and my memory. Every time they’d increase me in milligrams, the colors would change.
Pause.
For those of us living without synesthesia, the closest we can come to thinking in color is emotionally referential. See red, feeling blue. Oranges are oranges because well, they’re…orange.
Pause.
For my 20th birthday, my boyfriend gave me A Dictionary of Color Combinations by Sanzo Wada. The book has sat untouched on my coffee table, flanked by dusty tea cups and some expired copies of the Herald.
Pause.
This magazine was created for students of color.
“DOWN Magazine was created in the Spring of 2015 to be a space for writers of color to generate and disseminate work of all genres, from long-form nonfiction narrative to fiction, poetry, art, investigative journalism, and more.”
How do we make meaning of color, when it is our political constitution and an abundant fixture of this existence?
Pause.
At Yale, color comes alive at night. Cloud cover allows little to reflect off the zinc and limestone landscape.
Pause.
“You might as well get one thing straight. I’m not an abstractionist… I’m not interested in the relationships of color or form or anything else. I’m interested only in expressing basic human emotions—tragedy, ecstasy, doom and so on. And the fact that a lot of people break down and cry when confronted with my pictures shows that I communicate those basic human emotions… The people who weep before my pictures are having the same religious experience I had when I painted them. And if you, as you say, are moved only by their color relationships then you miss the point.”
–Mark Rothko
Pause.
This is an authorized syllabus through color, for color. Sanzo Wada’s color dictionary will be my guiding tool. It’s not technical, it’s just a feeling.
TO READ
Combination #157: Pansy Purple, Olive Ochre, and Olympic Blue
“Necropolitics” by Achille Mbembe
Cameroonian historian and theorist Achille Mbembe extends Michel Foucault’s conception of biopolitics to their furthest extent in his creation of necropolitics. Mbembe argues that the sovereign’s power is constituted through the right to decide who lives and who dies and the conditions of that life and death. Mbembe achieves this argument by importantly highlighting the erotics of power and pain, the psycho-spatial component of necropolitical regimes in the state of exception, and the “rebranding” of necropolitical regimes into normative (where “peace becomes war without end”). Peace as war without end. It’s exquisitely metal. This work is vital to understanding the operations of the colonial apparatus (past and present) and is a worthwhile read amidst the genocide happening in Palestine (pages 27 and 28 elaborate on necropower in Palestine directly). Read to sharpen your senses.
Combination #183: Dark Citrine, Light Mauve, Peach Red, Olympic Blue
Testo Junkie by Paul Preciado
I read excerpts of this book for a class last semester but found myself so compelled by the entire project. Testo Junkie is often described as “auto-theory” wherein Preciado combines his personal testimonial (almost a confession) as well as notes and drawings with his theorization of addiction and regulation. As aforementioned, I spent several months experiencing medicalized body alterations and interventions, so Preciado’s accounts of the sensations of self-administered testosterone parallel to the discourses (governmental, medical, cultural) about who and how testosterone can be used fascinated me. Read for exposure and novelty.
Combination #251: Red, Diamine Green, Slate Color, and Yellow
“Drugs are fucking everywhere (and we’re addicted to comfort).” by Ismatu Gwendolyn
You may have encountered Ismatu Gwendolyn on TikTok or Instagram Reels (personally I’m team reels), but for me, she’s often a refreshing interruption to mind-rotting content. “Drugs are fucking everywhere (and we’re addicted to comfort)” comes back to critiques of addiction but I find the most powerful part of her argument in the intricacies of collective catharsis through protest (horror, outrage, and anger are also drugs) which Gwendolyn argues capture acute spikes of public attention but not sustained resistance to the political conditions we find ourselves in. Read to channel your rage.
*If you like this, check out Gwendolyn’s work on the concept of beauty and self-alienation.
Combination #136: Red Violet, Scarlet, Dull Viridian Green
The Autobiography of My Mother by Jamaica Kincaid
This book left me in the fetal position on the floor. It’s a speculative imagining of a mixed woman’s life in colonial Dominica. Kincaid’s language is both lavish and surprising, yet the narrator is often cold and prescriptive. Kincaid’s interest and research into botany textures the reader’s landscape marvelously too. Read for beauty and the (rare) unabashed pleasure of a woman with herself.
Combination #307: Cotinga Purple, Grayish Lavender, Carmine, Aconite Violet
TO LISTEN
Playlist:
Faye Webster’s “Lifetime” / Listen for dreamy love.
Lauryn Hill’s “To Zion” / Listen for a mother’s love.
Stevie Wonder’s “My Cherie Amour” / Listen for steady love.
Stevie Nicks’ “Gold Dust Woman” / Listen for redemption (this one’s also about addiction…).
Sun Ra and His Arkestra’s “Enlightenment (Stereo)” / Listen for that one riff between 3:32-3:56.
John Coltrane’s “Naima” (2020 Remaster) / Listen to sway.
Carol King’s Tapestry (album) / Listen for nostalgia.
Julia Jacklin’s “You Were Right” / Listen in defiance!
Teyana Taylor’s “Issues / Hold On” / Listen for poetic honesty.
Fiona Apple’s “Across the Universe” / Listen because Fiona did it better than the Beatles.
Ella Fitzgerald’s “But Not For Me” / Listen if you’re sick of other people’s love.
Combination #59: Citrine and Eosine Pink
POETRY
Joyce Mansour’s “Light as a shuttle desire” / Read for the surreal.
Lucille Clifton’s “I am running into a new year” / Read because it’s not too late to savor the newness of this year.
Diane Seuss’s “Against Poetry” / Read for the final lines (an important imperative).
Ho Xuan Huong’s “The Jackfruit” / Read for some sticky, representational erotica.
Monica Youn’s “Study of Two Figures (Agave/Pentheus)” / Read for reinvention.
TO WATCH
Combination #51: Blue and Carmine Red
Carmen Sandiego
Admittedly, this is a children’s show. (Aside: I really don’t watch anything much or much of anything notable, and my options for this section were either Carmen SanDiego or the trashy teen drama Riverdale, but telling you to watch Riverdale felt too embarrassing). But it’s really calming and honestly informative. Carmen SanDiego is the Netflix remake of the classic 1994 television program, “Where on Earth is Carmen SanDiego?”. Gina Rodrigez (Jane the Virgin, Someone Great) narrates the fashionably dressed heroine, Carmen. Watch to chill out and learn about geography.
